Recruiting station

“ In Great Britain the whole recruiting has been placed under the immediate direction of the adjutant-general since 1802. For this purpose, the country has been divided into recruiting districts, at the head of which is placed an inspecting field-officer with the duty of superintending all recruiting parties in his district, and of approving the recruits brought. Staff-officers and sergeants of the Pensioner Force are also occasionally intrusted with the obtaining of recruits. The United States recruiting service is conducted by the adjutant-general, under the direction of the Secretary of War. ”

“ In practice the normal terms are seven years' colour service and five years' reserve service for the infantry, with certain modifications in the case of other arms. Enlistment may be made for general service or for a particular corps, and in the latter case the recruit will be posted to that corps only, and will ordinarily spend his whole service in it. A man desiring to enlist should present himself at a recruiting office, where he will be given a notice setting forth the terms of service. ”

“ This relief of battalions is made practicable by the national system. One of the first consequences of the new mode of recruiting will be that all recruits will be taken on the same given date, probably the 1st of January in each year, and, as this will apply as well to the men who re-engage to serve abroad as to all others, so soon as the system is in full working order, the men of any battalion abroad will belong to annual classes, and the engagement of each class will terminate on the same day. ”

“ The under-officer who is escorting a recruit must wear sword and pistol. He must make the recruit walk in front of him, never let him come too near, and warn him that a single false step may cost him his life. He must avoid large towns, and places where the recruit has previously served, as much as possible. It is also desirable to avoid the place where the recruit was born. They must spend the night at inns where the landlord is known to be well-disposed to recruiting officers, and sure to side with them, and not with their victim. ”

“ RECRUITING—APPLICANTS, REJECTIONS, ENLISTMENTS—ENLISTMENTS BY STATES.
The recruiting service of the corps was enlarged greatly during the war and it was so well organized and its method of procedure was so efficient that it was able to stand the enormous increase of the corps. The real test of any organization comes when a very great increase is suddenly made and the recruiting service of the Marine Corps passed that test in a commendable manner. ”

“ The difficulties of maintaining the army were unabated. 'All my accounts,' he wrote in April 1782, 'respecting the recruiting service are unfavourable; indeed, not a single recruit has arrived to my knowledge from any State except Rhode Island, in consequence of the requisitions of Congress in December last.' He strongly urged the impossibility of recruiting the army by voluntary enlistment, and recommended that, in addition to the compulsory enrolment of Americans, German prisoners should be taken into the army. ”

“ In the Boer War, during the first three months I think the increase in the number of recruits was 10,000 or 15,000, and during the whole of the war, from the beginning to the end, the increase in the number of recruits amounted to 20,000 or 30,000 a year to the Regular Army. You have never had anything like this, and, therefore, the ordinary machinery for the moment must be a little choked and paralysed. The recruiting sergeant is in the habit of getting his men with difficulty. ”

“ A statistical analysis, based on exit surveys and other data available to the military departments, on the impact that current personnel policies under the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act have on recruiting and retention of qualified regular and reserve officers of the Armed Forces. ”

“ Perhaps the real reason for this tenacity is that France, who is so proud of her military traditions, finds it hard to bring herself to dissolve a corps which has been in existence for more than eighty years and which has been led by many a famous general and marshal of France.
It has been suggested that it would be a good idea to change the method of recruiting. Passports should be demanded to make sure that the recruit had not got into trouble with the authorities of his own country. Deserters from the armies of other countries should on no condition be accepted. ”

“ To all graduating classes in school, a membership in a cadet corps would be an incentive, and school commissioners could make such membership a reward of merit.
It would relieve the service from the present unpleasant feature of recruiting by keeping behind it a subordinate corps of well-drilled young soldiers from which its ranks could be kept full. It would relieve officers from the drudgery of squad-drills, and give the service the full time of their men instead of wasting six, perhaps more, months in the present recruit classes. ”

“ They must be raised by volunteering. The inducements were bounties to the men and commissions to the officers. He who could raise a company in the least time was looked upon with the greatest favor [6] and, other things being equal, got the earliest letter in the alphabet of the regiment. The recruiting officer did not know what kind of a man, of what physical or moral fibre, the service required, and had no opportunity to learn. His object was to get his hundred men as quickly as possible ”

“ There were some clever rogues among the enlisted men, and the officers were as yet scarcely able to cope with the cunning of those who doubtless had intimate acquaintance with courts of justice and prisons in the Eastern States. The recruiting officer in the cities is not compelled, as in other occupations, to ask a character from a former employer. The Government demands able-bodied men, and the recruiting sergeant casts his critical eye over the anatomical [288] outlines, as he would over the good points of a horse destined for the same service. ”

“ Without committing myself to that project, I wrote to the Adjutant-General, R. Jones, at Washington, D. C., asking him to consider me as an applicant for any active service, and saying that I would willingly forego the recruiting detail, which I well knew plenty of others would jump at. ”

“ III. Recruits will be received for the Corps d'Afrique of all able bodied men from sections of the country not occupied by our forces, and beyond our lines, without regard to the enrollment provided for in General Orders No. 64 and 70, from these Headquarters.
IV. Instructions will be given by the President of the Commission of Enrollment to the Superintendent of Recruiting, to govern in all matters of detail relating to recruiting, and officers will be held to a strict accountability for the faithful observance of existing orders and such instructions ”

“ Each field officer may moreover give directions to the hospital mate, who is placed under his orders, to examine the recruits when brought for inspection, and to give such medical assistance as may be in his power, to the several recruiting parties in the district he belongs to.
When colonels of regiments take upon themselves the whole direction of the recruiting service for their own corps, they must conform to the regulations which require returns to be made to the inspector general of the recruiting service ”

“ RECRUITING.—One of the most important duties of medical officers is the examination of recruits, for without their certificate of efficiency no sepoy is enrolled in a regular regiment; and his firmness will often be put to the test by the men of his regiment trying to pass inefficient youths, their relations, into the service. Every recruit should therefore be stripped and carefully examined from head to foot, in private, of course. The natives of the upper provinces from which recruits are chiefly drawn, are not liable to many constitutional disorders unfitting them for arms. ”

“ As a rule, all these officers are in command of men of the same ages as themselves, and the method of recruiting is as follows:—At stated and periodical intervals, generally from two to five years, a general levy takes place, when all the youths who happen at that time to have attained the age of fifteen are formed into a regiment and undergo a year's probation, during which time they are supposed to pass from boyhood to manhood. As the regiment becomes disciplined and seasoned it receives large drafts from other corps, so that as the elders die out young men come in to fill up the ranks. ”

“ Recruiting.—For recruiting purposes, India is divided into districts, each in charge of an officer, who recruits only for some particular race. All recruiting parties detached from regiments work under his orders, and all candidates for enlistment are brought to him for approval after undergoing medical examination. The number of applicants for service, especially for the Silladar Cavalry, is often in excess of the number of vacancies available. Recruits must be from sixteen to twenty-five years of age. ”

“ The dignity with which the recruiting is done is very pleasing, for these officers, uncommissioned though they be, wear their uniforms with the grace of a major-general. When they approach a man, they do so with an air of authority, in a straightforward manner, and although they depict the attractions of the service beguilingly, they seldom attempt to42 gain a recruit against his will. Most of those who loiter about the boards come with their minds made up to enlist, and do not need any great amount of persuasion. ”

“ Here, however, as recruiting depends upon the good-will of the people, it is impossible to work the soldiers with any degree of rigour. Hence the voluntary soldier must serve longer than a conscript in order to attain the same proficiency. The reserve is thus weakened, and the total trained regular force diminished. Moreover, as fewer recruits are required annually, there is less work for the officers to do. ”

“ In carrying out the policy of obtaining officers from the ranks, orders were issued to commanding officers of every post and station of the Marine Corps, both at home and abroad, as well as those on board ship, to the effect that all commissioned officers would be taken from the ranks, and that the number of men to be designated from each post to attend the training camp would be a certain percentage of the number of men stationed at such post or station. ”

“ Even the system of bounties proved attractive only to boys; for as the English statesman said, whose name is honourably associated with the first change in our system from enlistment for life to enlistment for a limited period, ‘men grown up with all the grossness and ignorance and consequent want of consideration incident to the lower classes’ were too wary to accept the offers of the recruiting department. ”

“ Recruiting officers consist generally of captains and lieutenants of the line, who must not permit any man to be deceived or inveigled into the service by false representations. If the recruit is a minor, his parents or guardians must, if possible, be informed of the minor’s wish to enlist, and their written consent obtained therefor. Any male person above the age of eighteen, and under thirty-five years, being effective, able-bodied, sober, free from disease, of good character and habits, with a competent knowledge of the English language, may be enlisted. ”

“ Personnel offices have been established in all Army divisions, depot and training camps, coast defense stations, aviation fields, special training camps for Staff Corps and at other Army Posts. In these offices a special card system furnished accessible information as to the educational, occupational, and military qualifications of every man. With a minimum of clerical work this system selected 973,858 men for transfer largely into technical units in the Engineers, Aviation, Ordnance and other Staff Corps, and even more men for transfer within the divisions or camps. ”

“ The recruiting offices in time of peace show a small but steady stream of callers; they are not from the degraded classes, nor are they ignorant men; they are young men of various social grades who, in many cases, have been advised by older men to enter the army, or who think they see in its discipline, regularity of life, and opportunity for promotion a promising opening for three years of trial.
The rigidity of the examinations is in itself an attraction to the young American. ”

“ I have been told that recruiting officers have brought pressure to bear upon recruits to prevent them from going into Irish regiments, and I should like to get hold of an authentic case. When these rumours first came to me, I went to the War Office, and I was assured that a recruiting officer who did anything of that kind was guilty of a gross abuse of duty. Any man who went into a recruiting office to enlist was entitled to choose for himself what regiment he would enter, and whether that regiment was stationed in Fermoy or Tipperary the Government would send him free of charge. ”

“ The recruiting was done by private individuals, and at their own expense, under the authority of the Governor of the State. These private individuals, as a matter of course, expected, as a reward for their labor and expenditures, to be commissioned in the companies which they might raise. ”

“ RECRUITING, a term prefixed to certain corps and districts, which are specifically established for the recruiting service. Hence recruiting districts.
All recruits made for the regular army of the U. States, are inlisted for five years. In almost every service in Europe men are enlisted for a certain number of years, except the British, who inlist for life. Experience has convinced the powers upon the continent of Europe, that the system of binding a man during the whole course of his life to military subjection, is contrary to every sound principle of œconomy, and effective service. ”